ABSTRACT
An integrated river basin management program was initiated in the mid-1960s in the Plate River basin by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Cooperative international actions were intended to achieve balanced and harmonious basin development and accelerate regional economic advances. This chapter reviews the basin development efforts. It deals with a survey of basin characteristics, and considers major thrusts in the cooperative development program to date, examines of the degree to which program impacts have been traced by the engineers and scientists engaged in planning for the Plate basin. The Parana is a major river with a total length of 4,262 km and with its longest reach in the upper basin above the Paraguay River confluence. The magnitude of peak discharges and areas of flooding throughout the basin under unregulated conditions is imperfectly understood. In its extensive review of physical conditions, Organization of American States was unable to compile sufficient historical data to prepare flood hazard map.
